


only going over home.

by eoghainy



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Other, Reminiscing, hints of blakefield if you squint, william just needs quiet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22782520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eoghainy/pseuds/eoghainy
Summary: just like you, a little older.schofield thinks, heart in his throat.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	only going over home.

**Author's Note:**

> i know a lot of people don't like reading a fic in lapslock, BUT it felt fitting for what i was writing. if it's not your thing, no worries. but once i started, i couldn't stop. 
> 
> also, yes, i do realize that i deleted my previous work in the fandom. rereading it, i realized i hated it. so i started to work on something else that would make me happier - and here it is y'all. 
> 
> i think of this movie like. every day. i can't wait for it to be on dvd.

“scho.” his voice is pitched like a warning, low and warm, breaking through an old soldiers’ reverie. eyes of topaz land upon a familiar face, blurred momentarily by the sun; he sees long forgotten youth. darker eyes, lighter hair, rounder cheeks complete with a brilliant, wide-spread smile. it’s all too easy to see what he wants to see. to see what has long come to pass. it’s too easy to pretend that the blake before him is the one he desperately wants to see.

a cherry blossom lands in joe’s tousled hair. he brushes it away with clean and delicate fingers. schofield watches its lonely path to the ground, where it’s cradled by blades of emerald.

“you alright, mate?” joe is kind to comfort him. they should be in reversed roles; it should be joe standing in the orchard, watching the petals fall with a distant, empty expression while schofield tries in vain to catch his attention. it should be joe aching for the return of his brother. why wasn’t it like that? perhaps it was because when tom entered the army, joe prepared for the inevitable; the awful truth that he’d lose his brother – and he had said his goodbye long ago. tom had not died in joe’s arms. tom’s blood had not, quite literally, been on joe’s hands.

“i’m fine,” schofield manages. his voice is dry and catches in his throat, feeling like sandpaper. “just tired. i didn’t sleep very well last night.” not quite a lie, not quite the truth. joe understands.

a hum of agreement comes from the blake. both were used to the near-constant layer of noise that had become comforting in the trenches. they both were lacking in the feel of multiple presences in their bunk, the reassurance of weapons only inches away, and the abstract familiarity of having order and command right at their fingertips. being home was strange and usual, unfamiliar. terrifying. it was an inescapable nightmare that felt like a fever dream.

“it’s very quiet here. i’m sure it’s not what you’re used to.” joe is watching him with careful eyes. schofield neglects to meet his gaze. he knows that schofield lived in the city with his family, surrounded by a constant field of noise. the farm is different. the quiet can be haunting.

“it’s just fine. you don’t have to worry.” he reassures, but is incredibly aware that he doesn’t sound anywhere close to genuine. everything he does lately falls flat, so painfully short of the emotion that he doesn’t feel. “i feel close to him here. being here doesn’t let me forget him.” vulnerability makes schofield stare up at the sky, eyes tracing the outline of a fluffy cloud. “every time the blossoms shed, before the trees are in fruit, i’m reminded of him. like it’s tom’s way of reminding me, us, that he’s still here. that he isn’t quite gone.”

the weight of joe’s gaze is heavy upon his shoulders. schofield still doesn’t look at him. no longer does he see the vibrant blues of the sky, but instead sees the destroyed farmhouse. the torn-up barn. the haunting graveyard of cow corpses so plainly left out to decay. he sees tom, but not as he was; instead with rotted skin and maggots for eyes, with shriveled up lips peeled back over yellowed teeth and bones grinding into dust. organs that liquify from the heat of early summer and seep out through the pores of his skin, fertilizing the ground beneath his body. he wishes that he had had time to bury tom, just so that he wouldn’t be easy food for scavengers and exposed to all the elements. there just hadn’t been enough time. time had been a greater enemy than the germans had been.

“music makes me think of him. tom used to play the piano, quite well actually. i would come home from work on a warm summer’s eve, and he’d be plodding away in the foyer, lost in song. now our piano sits, completely unused. forgotten.” joe chuckles without mirth, thumb scrubbing over the expanse of his jaw. the pad of his digit catches against his thick scruff. “puppies, too. he loved puppies.”

 _who doesn’t?_ schofield almost finds himself asking. he doesn’t give voice to his question.

“i think of him at the strangest times. when mum smiles at me, or when i see flowers – even when the church bell rings. it’s like he’s always on my mind, ready to remind me of him at the strangest of moments. i’ve found that it doesn’t hurt as much as it once did. it’s easier to smile now. his memory doesn’t haunt me like it used to.” joe is closer to him now. they’re shoulder-to-shoulder, watching a lone bird flutter about in the sky. his presence, so close, is comforting.

“it’s still hard for me.” schofield confides in a low, scratchy voice. it feels unused. blunt. “on the field, it was easy to push it away. now . . .” his voice trails off meaningfully. joe understands, just as he always does. “i’m thankful for your family letting me stay here.” the topic changes easily. joe goes with it as easily as tom used to. he doesn’t push, and schofield doesn’t yield.

“you know my mother loves you. you’ve always got a place with us.” a hand claps his shoulder. joe’s skin feels fiery through the thin material of his shirt. schofield is incredibly aware of the rare contact. “for as long as you need, scho.”

he thinks of a different blake that would call him that, and how the shorthand nickname came to be when tom had been the pinnacle of exhaustion. at the mess for breakfast, the new nickname had slipped out in the midst of a yawn, and neither had addressed it. there hadn’t been a need to. schofield had gone with it, figuring that it was far better than being called a hero. the last thing young tom had needed was another excuse to set him upon a pedestal, to look at him with such admiration in his eyes.

heartache was such a lonely killer.

“she is too kind to me.” all he wants is to be by his lonesome, to stare upon the white scars on his palm and watch the blossoms coat his skin until he’s drowning in them. he wants to die wrapped up in the cool embrace of his jasmine memories, but joe keeps his head above the proverbial water that threatens to drag him to the dark depths. joe gives him reason to not succumb to the despair.

“she has been wondering if you’d like to bring your sisters here. the orchard has grown, and my mother isn’t as young as she used to be. we’d need a great many hands to pick the fruit off the trees – and it might be nice for them. good work, too. she’d even pay.” joe speaks with a need to fill the silence. schofield lets him. it is here that he knows joe feels close to tom, too. in this spot, with the sunlight warming their battle-worn bodies and the blossoms showering them in white, schofield knows he is not alone in his constant ache for a friend lost so terribly.

for once, he does not see his hands stained with red. they’re thin and trembling, skin stretched over bone, nails bitten down to the cuticle. they’re clean and pristine, lacking the dirt and the grime and the gunk and the blood that he’s become so familiar with over the past few years. they are not red with tom’s blood. they are clean. so he tells himself for a slight moment of comfort.

“i’ll write home and ask before i head off to bed tonight. i’m sure they’ll love the opportunity. i must confess, they aren’t as quiet as me. they’re rambunctious rascals that destroy almost everything in their path. i dread for the poor fruit, and i worry on how it will sell after they are finished handling it.” schofield speaks candidly of the girls he barely knew now. were they women grown, or still the youthful beauties he had left behind before the somme? he did not know. his mother stopped sending pictures, and schofield didn’t ask. their letters were written by strangers, read in a language that he did not speak.

joe’s laughter is tinkling, light, a golden ray that brings a tingling sensation that is a memory of joy. it sounds like tom’s, just a bit deeper. he hears a whisper of the younger blake’s echoing laughter on the breeze, and it’s whisked away with the stray blossoms that weren’t snared on blades of grass or on branches of bushes. he watches them go, listening to tom’s laughter go with it.

 _just like you, a little older._ schofield thinks, heart in his throat.

“your parents are invited as well,” joe prompts once the silence becomes too much for him. these blake men were uncomfortable with it, always having to be talking about _something_. whether it was a comedic remark or story, a bothersome quip or just some random question, they always had to be speaking to avoid the pressure of silence. it used to bother him at first when tom never shut the fuck up, but the reassuring nature of it grew upon him over time. soon enough he found himself anticipating what it was that tom would say to him to fill the silence. joe, too, suffered from this problem. many reflective moments had been interrupted by joe blurting out whatever was on his mind.

“my father is ill; he won’t make a journey out here. my mum won’t leave him by himself. to be quite honest, i’m not even sure she’ll let the girls out of her sight, not even to come see me.” that’s as personal as schofield was willing to get, and joe senses it. he understands what remains unsaid; they are his blood, but they are not family. _mum doesn’t even know who i am anymore, and i can’t say i blame her. i don’t know who i am either. have i ever known?_

stiffness makes schofield shift, knees popping like distant gunfire as he adjusts. joe leans away from him. he’s cold where joe was only moments ago. “well, a shame. a good gathering would liven up this place.” he proclaims it like it’s the answer to all the problems that the blake family had; a succumbing farm, bankruptcy, an ailing mother and a deceased son. if only it were that simple.

at least they got a medal and a nice letter out of tom’s death, right? nothing like a bit of rusty tin and damp ribbon to replace the piece of you that you lost on the battlefield. tom’s naïve dream right there, the companion to schofield’s living nightmare. it was a haunting reminder of tom’s death, nestled right in with all of joe’s achievements. a collection of awarded medals of bravery, all meaning nothing.

“if my mum agrees, my sisters will do that for you. your poor mother will quickly be wishing that she hadn’t invited them.” it’s almost enough to pull from his lips a wry smirk. tom had been good at wringing surprised smiles out of him, but when he died, the ability to do so went with him. sometimes, he wondered if his ability to smile had died with tom. other times, he didn’t have to wonder. he just knew.

schofield doubted anyone would believe him if he said that he used to be capable of so much more than this. he’d been a quiet child in his youth, watchful and intelligent, but had a promising future ahead of him as someone with great intellect. he’d always had a strong sense of duty, even as a boy, so when the soldiers came knocking looking for volunteers, he went with his head held high and his mother’s terrified protests echoing in his ears. barely even a boy grown, he’d survived the bloodiest battle of his history, the somme, and the experience had aged him by a decade. because of his valor on the battlefield, he’d been rotated home with a scrap of tin to call his own, and everything had changed. the world felt as if it shifted off its axis and became a parallel to the life he knew and cherished, a cruel mockery of familiarity.

it wasn’t the dullness of civilian life, or ease of which regular people lived. it was the casualty. the lack of direction. the monotonous drone of get married, have children, work, die of sickness. it was that a world wide war still needed to be fought, and no one wanted to fight it. no one wanted to protect their people. no one wanted to risk themselves for a cause that didn’t speak to them. duty and loyalty outweighed perseveration and family, so schofield had himself shipped back to the front with the hopes that this would be the death of him, just so he didn’t have to go back home once it was over and pretend he was happy to be there.

he didn’t love war, in fact he hated it. there was nothing in this world that would ever top the horrors of war and how terrible it is that humans are capable of such awfulness. he just hated what home became even more.

“i miss it sometimes,” joe tells him quietly. the mood between them shifts, becoming somber. schofield senses grief in the shared space between them, as well as the bitter taste of fear. he feels slippery mud beneath his feet instead of solid soil, and for a moment, he remembers. “being out there. it seems like that’s the only world i know now. how do i be what everyone here wants me to be? i don’t know how i ever did it before.” he says the last word like it defines the change in him, and schofield feels for joe in this moment. it’s his dilemma as well.

“we just have to try to go back.” schofield offers, saying it like he doesn’t believe it. truly, he doesn’t. he feels like he’s reading off a card, lacking in all mirth. “try to pretend that this is what we want. that it’s easy to live like this. in remembrance of what we’ve gone through, but unable to return to it. our families want us to be the people we were before we went away.” that’s why he hated home. his mother still expected a fine girl to be on his arm, a baby to come before the winter. she expected, and he just couldn’t.

“i think mum is too scared to lose me, too, so she doesn’t push. i know she wishes i’d come back. i don’t know how to tell her that i don’t think i ever will.” joe braces against a nearby tree, knuckles white. his hair glints red in the sun. for the first time, schofield _sees_ him. everything he’s been feeling, all tied up inside of himself and confusing his brain, is reflected back at him through joe. he’d been trying to make himself see joe as tom, to make them one whole person, but in doing so he’s been unfair. he’s been ignoring the bleeding need beneath joe’s skin that’s been calling to him for months.

joe has been a fantastic friend to him, and this is how schofield repays him – trying to turn him into his deceased brother?

“it’s just as hard for them as it is for us,” schofield says levelly, not allowing his guilt to poison the moment between them. joe needed this, and in a way, so did he. always, so did he. “they lost us, and we’ve returned to them as ghosts. a memory of someone who doesn’t belong here anymore.”

he averts his gaze away from joe just as the other man looks at him. there is understanding dawning between them, words given to a feeling that brews beneath the surface, tainting everything from the inside out. it’s silent as joe touches his shoulder in passing and retreats back to the house, leaving schofield wrapped tightly in the memories of moments past. a symphony of gunshots and screams and shells and dying men repeats itself within his brain as his eyes unfocus, seeing past the shedding orchard and visualizing the muddied walls of the trenches. his nose burns with the changes in scent, of sweet blossoms souring into shit and decay, tingling with the sharp underlying tone of iron. hours are wasted doing this as the sun sets below the horizon and darkness overtakes the farm.

when the memories of war subside and he’s left with his longing, schofield returns back to the dark house. he has missed dinner – a common occurrence – but joe leaves him a plate on the stove, and he eats quickly. as he barely tastes the fantastic food mrs. blake made earlier, he thought of how he and joe had never crossed paths before tom’s death.

both of them had been conscripted in 1914, joining the volunteer army far too young with their mother’s protests following them and their younger siblings watching with veiled fear. whereas schofield was welcomed into the entente, joe had been sent to africa – where he fought valiantly until cycling back once the fighting was over. both of them served within self-contained battalions that did whatever was needed for two whole years until the battle of the somme. schofield was stationed there on the first day, a firsthand witness to the complete and utter slaughter that was this battle. stories swapped by a gentle fire encouraged by the warm touch of whiskey revealed that joe had been there in the form of reinforcements.

their paths had always come so close to intersecting, but never had. it seems that it wasn’t meant to be until schofield was keeping his head low in the 8th, and joe was rising to stardom in the devons. when they couldn’t be more different, couldn’t be so far apart, _that_ was when their lives came together.

his thoughts are occupied by this as he quietly climbs the creaky stairs, navigating his path to his bedroom without sight. it was luck that he and joe had never met before tom’s death, perhaps even god forestalling their meeting so that they could be there for one another when they needed each other the most.

closing the door behind him, schofield turns on the gas lamp on his desk and sits. his pen hovers over the expanse of white paper beneath his dusty hand, and the moments pass through his fingers like sand as he struggles of what to write.

 _mum, i’m sorry the family isn’t the support i need._

_mum, i’m sorry i can’t ever come home._

_mum, i miss you._

all pathetic excuses that he could not write. every time he puts these words to paper in his neat, looping scrawl, schofield immediately balls up his work of lies and throws it in a wastebasket. he spends much of his night repeating this sinister process, each time growing more and more frustrated by his inability to sound sincere to the woman that he was supposed to love more than anything else in the world. he settles eventually on the ease of simplicity, where he states that he is doing well on the blake’s farm, and that he misses his family. that is not a lie. he writes of mrs. blake’s kindness, and of joe’s welcoming nature, and how they’ve invited his sisters to join them to pick the fruit once it’s ripe. he promises that their tickets for the train will be paid for, and that they would be safe here in the country under his supervision. every ounce of passion that he’s been lacking is poured into this small, empty letter that is a far cry of what schofield used to write.

light begins to shyly peak through the windows and play chase with the dust bunnies upon the wallpaper once schofield is finished. he has not slept a wink, but this does not bother him. the exhaustion that aches deep within his bones is ever constant, an impossible thing to flee from. he is stiff and sore from sitting so long as he gets up, stretches, and changes before peeling back the covers of his bed and sliding in.

hands find themselves folded on his chest as he lays in the growing light, eyelids slowly lowering over tired eyes as he relaxes into the featherbed mattress. bright lights explode upon his dark lids in the form of firing guns, and for a brief moment he sees the youthful roundness of tom’s face lit up for the millisecond that fired bullets allow light.

 _goodnight, blake_. he thinks drowsily as he drops off, the riptides of sleep pulling him under.


End file.
